Pro-infanticide profawarded ethics prize

A controversial professor who advocates killing the disabled up to 28 days after birth, has been honored with an international ethics award.

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has been given the 2003 World Technology Award for Ethics by the World Technology Network.

The organization says its members are dedicated to the business and science of emerging technologies such as biotechnology and new energy sources.

“I am delighted to have been selected by my peers as a winner of the 2003 World Technology Award in the ethics category,” Singer said in a statement issued by the university.

“The fact that the World Technology Network has an ethics award at all is a recognition of the importance of keeping ethics in mind as we move forward with new technologies in a wide variety of fields, from genetics to computing,” he said.

The awards, announced at the World Technology Summit in late June, honor individuals and corporations from 20 technology-related sectors selected by their peers as innovators.

When Singer was hired by Princeton in 1999, a group calling itself Princeton Students Against Infanticide issued a petition in protest, charging the Australian professor “denies the intrinsic moral worth of an entire class of human beings – newborn children.”

“His assertion of the appropriateness of killing some humans based on others’ decision concerning the “quality” of their lives should strike fear into everyone who cherishes equality and honors human life,” the petition said.

The group called the hiring a “blatant violation of Princeton University’s policy of respect for people with disabilities.”

Singer also is known for launching the modern animal rights movement with his 1975 book “Animal Liberation,” which argues against “speciesism.”

Singer insists animals should be accorded the same value as humans and should not be discriminated against because they belong to a non-human species.